Skakos wrote:Does your kid show problems in concentrating at school? In the old days, you would deal with this with discussion with your kid along with some old good parental techniques (including the "do your homework or you will not get an icecream" old trick)...

However nowadays the official story is that your kid has a mental disorder. Science has determined your kid is "ill". Proper "therapy" is the best ay forward.

Am I the only one who find this STUPID?

I just saw the "Side Effects" movie at the cinema and I must say I am really shocked about how we all see the truth but openly and blatantly deny to do something practical about it.

Modern phychiatry has become more and more a billion-dollar industry of "prescribe drugs-make money" than a place to get better. Sure there are cases where drugs help or are the only way to solve problems. But we have crossed the line here: almost every social behaviour is tagged as "abnormal" in some aspect and a proper drug is listed in the official "take the drug to get better with no personal effort" list...

Ecurb wrote:This is silly, Rombomb. If "Acting out of self-interest means acting consistently with one's preferences. It means trying to get what one wants...", then ALL voluntary actions are "self-interested", by definition. However, if every volitional act is "self-interested" then the distinction between "self-interest" and "altruism" does not exist. If someone WANTS to have his taxes raised to help the poor, his seeming altruism is actually "self-interest".

"Self-interested" must mean something other than "volitional", or we should simply abandon using the word. Ayn Rand, by distinguishing volitional self-interest and volitional altrusim obviously agrees with me, and not with you.